Only fools thinks they are right all of the time….

Archived Poems: 2014

Here are the poems I posted to my blog in 2014.

2 Poems from December 23, 2014

A-Hunting She Will Go…

She sleeps the day away in peaceful slumber,
her breath a nonexistent wisp, her skin
so cold you’d swear that she was dead. But when
nightfall comes, her eyelids flutter, come
to life. She rises slowly, like a damsel
kissed. Her yawn could stretch for miles; thin
arms crinkle like old parchment dried by wind
enchanted by the gods and long-entombed.
The night is hers—this night is hers—and she
embraces it with relish. She becomes
the night, becomes the nightmare, the scream….
She floats atop the stone floor like a dream
that never ends. But soon the dawn will come….
Her time is short, and she must hurry, hurry….

Sonnets to Shiver By

Sonnets to Shiver By? Chilling and sweet,
written in rhythms of iambic feet;
Searching out poems that reach out and snatch,
clamoring sideways on feet that don’t match.
Sonnets to Shiver By? what do they mean?
Wonderment failing, I live for a dream;
Reading in riddles that claim not to care,
the poems of merit rhyme everywhere;

Breathing through nostrils that flare in delight,
hunching down deeper to read through the night,
cramming in mouthfuls of imbalanced rhyme,
porous, like sponges, my mind fills with grime
and sifts through the morsels more precious than gold:
Sonnets to Shiver By? Treasures to hold!

Moksha

Ennui

Sometimes, when I’m
bored, I tinker with the
icons on my desktop,
rearranging them into
patterns that serve no
purpose and hoping to find
inspiration. But shifting
the icons around does
little to change the drivel
dangling inside them.

Instead of wrestling with the indentation and tabulation, I did a screen-capture of this poem and uploaded it to see if it works. Now that I know it does, it will make it easier to upload other visual poems in the future. “The Rose Bush” may have been published in Night Roses back in 1995 or 1996. It was accepted for publication, but attempts to confirm that it was published have gone unanswered.

Revision on August 9, 2014: Since posting this poem, I’ve revised it as two different poems on the same theme. I think it is more effective as the following two poems, since the first stanza had a different style and was much more overt in its criticism than the last two stanzas (which were more subtle and seemed to have a different message). Here they are:

Forbidden Fruit

In Eden,
when Adam bit
into the apple, it
had the sweetest
flavor that man-
kind has ever
known.

Charon’s Obol

She stands before the open
casket, tenderly gazing down
at her young grandson, wrapped
in his favorite blanket,
the rattle by his side
as if he’s sleeping, and
she leans forward to slip
a dime into his palm,
just in case the old gods
are watching….

Kantian Ethics

Immanuel Kant was rigid in his ways
and routinized everything that happened in his days;
People set their clocks by the habits that he had,
and everyone agreed he was an affable man!

The German university at Königsberg was home;
He lectured on commission for years before they chose
to give him a professorship and salary to boot;
and later in his life he started writing books.

His philosophy of morals are more rigorous than most,
demanding no exceptions regardless of the cost;
The only thing that matters is the person’s good intent;
The consequences of the act are all irrelevant!

We formulate a maxim (a subjective moral rule)
and will it to become a universal law;
If it survives the logic of our reason’s guiding light,
then we must act accordingly because our maxim’s right!

The choice is ours to act this way—we have autonomy—
and if we use our reason well, then all of us will see
the duties that we all will find are one and all the same
for from the categorical imperative they came!

The dignity of rational creatures is supreme,
so treat them as an end—never merely as a means;
If we do that then we have done all they can demand,
fulfilling all our duties the best way that we can!

For Kant there is objective moral truth awaiting us
that reason can discover in those universal laws,
but if we fail to use our minds to find out what they are,
the moral choices that we make will always end up flawed!

So use your mind and think it through before you choose to act;
Others have a right to this—it’s what they can expect—
Do your moral work yourself—be autonomous!—
And it will be the better for every one of us!

Eventually when everyone is doing what he says,
his ideal will be achieved in the Kingdom of Ends.
Until that day we’ll muddle through the error of our ways,
as egoistic inclinations lead us all astray.

Progress Report: April 1, 2014

Am I a fool today? I let the dead-
line pass. No health insurance yet. I’ll pay
the fine and hope I don’t pay more. Too bad
my teaching schedule was reduced…. But hey,
it gave me lots of time to write. In three
short months I wrote some fifty four—no, this
one makes it fifty five—poems. Hmmm…. I see
that total isn’t all that high. It’s just
the poetry. I’ve also written fic-
tion: half a dozen stories, one novel-
la, full drafts for a pair of novels (which
are fantasy adventure stories)…. Well,
I guess I have been busy: I’m a writing fool,
and I’ll be one until the start of summer school!

“Stray Thoughts” was originally published by Inner, Weather in 2004, with somewhat different formatting.

Stray Thoughts

A single autumn. leaf of amber solitude
A slithering snake falling in the forest. abruptly interrupts me
The teapot bubbles with its warning hiss. angrily screaming like mad
The clouds resemble Angels from Heaven. a toy tugboat and feathers
I see the bodies floating on blue seas. entombed in cold underbrush
My eyes fill with tears and brittle memory. for the buried kittens that. died in the summer.

Probiotic Observation

My sister says my poetry is bland.
It doesn’t hit her in the gut or draw
emotion out. OK. I understand.
I tend to be cerebral when I scrawl
my sordid little lines. I think—not feel—
my way through poem after poem, play-
ing with the words, toying with the rhymes, kill-
ing time while looking for the truth and pray-
ing I don’t find it. But she likes my hu-
mor, says my dark side shines (I have a knack
for the macabre), and will admit she u-
sually hates to read poems—they rank
below dry political theory! But
her droll opinion lines this sonnet’s gut….